Sony A7 IV review: Mirrorless magic

For tropical to a decade, Sony's Alpha lineup has been the nomination of many filmmakers and creators.

The reason for this is simple: these cameras offer unconfined performance in a meaty form, substantially giving you a really high-end tool that's moreover easy to siphon around.

In the full-frame market, everything began with the Sony A7's release in 2013. And with 2018's Sony A7 III standing the line's legacy as stuff the mirrorless all-rounder range to consider, how does the A7 IV stack up?

Well, one thing is for sure - it's not cheap. As Sony has proved many times before, though, value is weightier found in the performance and full-length set.

Design

• 131.3 x 96.4 x 79.8 mm
• 658g soul weight - including the shower and SD card
• E-mount for interchangeable lenses

We’ve long enjoyed the meaty form of Sony’s full-frame offering. While the A7 IV isn't tiny - not to the levels of the A7c, at least - it’s still meaty and easy to siphon around.

It’s not really any worthier than Panasonic’s micro four-thirds cameras, like the GH5 and GH6, and yet still fits in a full-frame sensor.

It feels sturdy and well-made, too. The chassis is solid, with a reassuring heft, although, plane then, it's light unbearable that it’s easy to use handheld. This is helped remoter by the generous size of the grip that protrudes out of the front, and is coated in grippy rubber to ensure you don’t waif it easily.

There are a load of buttons and dials dotted virtually the body, as well, which is useful. However, considering it’s Sony, these are moreover a little inconvenient. Some just don’t seem to be particularly well placed. For instance - in archetype Sony style - the ‘Menu’ sawed-off isn’t within easy reach of the right thumb. It sits to the left of the viewfinder, instead.

So if you’re gripping it with your right hand, there’s no way you’ll get to the main menu without using your left.

Other dials and buttons are quite a lot increasingly convenient. Then there's the dial for switching between photo, video and Slow & Quick modes, which sits underneath the shot preset dial. It’s fine really, and the fact it’s locked by default ways you won’t unwittingly switch to 'Photo' mode when shooting a video.

Behind that are two increasingly dials which, when set in transmission mode, retread the shutter speed and exposure bounty by default. There's moreover a grippy little directional joystick on the when that lets you retread the focus point manually when in autofocus mode. Add that to the four programmable custom function buttons, directional navigation wheel and the defended movie button, and you have pretty much anything you need.

Thankfully, the days of Sony not raising a proper flip-out screen are overdue us. The A7 IV has one.

That ways you can flip it out to squatter the same direction as the lens, making it easier to mucosa yourself. It moreover rotates well-nigh 270-degrees to squatter forwards or backwards, or have it squatter lanugo for those times you shoot while holding the camera up whilom your head.

The only issue with that flip-out screen is that it does woodcut the ports a little when it's facing forward, preventing easy access. Plus, if you're unquestionably using those ports while filming, you'll be blocking the view of the display.

Ports and connectivity

• Dual memory vellum slot - SD and CFExpress Type A
• HDMI, Type-C (with Power Delivery), 3.5mm input and output
• 2.4Ghz/5Ghz Wi-Fi - Bluetooth LE

It's 2022, and that naturally ways any self-respecting camera maker ensures you have unbearable ports to make it useful for video capture. For Sony, that ways 3.5mm input and separate 3.5mm output for microphones and headphones respectively.

There's a USB-C port for connecting to your computer for file transfer, but, crucially, the A7 IV moreover supports Power Delivery for charging on the go. Then, of course, there's the HDMI port for hooking it up to a monitor or external recorder monitor.

As for vellum support, you get two memory vellum slots. Both support SD cards, but the first slot is moreover uniform with CFExpressA, which is Sony’s own CFEpxress vellum format. It’s smaller than the kind used by Panasonic's GH6, but it can read and write and faster speeds than SDXC. This is useful for the times you want to shoot in upper bitrate file formats.

It's moreover equipped with wireless connectivity via dual-band (2.4/5Ghz) Wi-Fi, as well, as low energy Bluetooth. This enables wireless file transfer and remote tenancy function via your smartphone.

What is it like to use?

• Real-time AF/tracking for humans, animals and birds
• Breathing compensation
• 1.3cm electronic viewfinder (OLED)
• NP-FZ100 battery

Like any camera, a big part of what affects how the camera feels is impacted by the lens you use with it. Given that Sony sent us a prime, wide-angle 14mm f/1.8 lens, that did limit the wits somewhat. There's only so much you can do with a lens that doesn’t zoom and, stuff wide-angle, isn’t unchangingly keen on focussing on tropical up objects.

However, while the lens wasn’t platonic for all scenarios, there are lots of things to love well-nigh the way the A7 IV handles itself, and a big part of that is the wide sensor and processing makeup. Just as we’ve experienced with previous recent Sony cameras, the speed at which it operates is really impressive.

Stick it in autofocus and you’ll get eye-tracking in real-time by default. So, whether you’re shooting a person or an animal, if their vision are in view, it’ll lock on and track them. And it does so reliably, too. If you want to manually track an object, you can simply touch it on the screen. It stays locked on whether it moves, or you move. For the most part, that works well.

For still photography, the speed at which it can lock on to an zone and shoot a photo is really impressive. Sometimes it feels a bit too fast, and can unquestionably start to finger like a trust exercise just yoyo the camera has focused on the right area.

There are a couple of elements that can make the Sony camera a little tricky to use, though, and they're the same as we've seen in most recent models.

Firstly, the fact you can't just printing the shutter sawed-off to start recording a video seems unusual, expressly when you have to be in the defended video mode to shoot it in the first place. Instead, you get told off by the A7 IV and instructed to printing the tiny, fiddly red sawed-off instead.

Secondly, Sony’s menu system in the software is nonflexible to get yawner to. There are so many options in there to customise the wits and settings, and, while this is a positive in some respects, it moreover makes it long-winded and unintuitive to navigate around.

Battery life is pretty strong, however, for a camera this powerful. We never found ourselves panicking well-nigh how long we could shoot for. What’s more, since it has USB-C that accepts power, you can plug it into a shower pack while on the move to top it up while you’re not using it.

Photo and video

• 33MP Exmor R CMOS 35mm full-frame sensor
• Bionz XR ISP - up to 10fps bursts
• 4:2:2 10 bit 4K/60 video
• 5-axis SteadyShot stabilisation

At the heart of the A7 IV lies the latest 33-megapixel Exmor R full-frame sensor, paired with the powerful Bionz XR image processing unit. It's a unconfined pairing, and, withal with some clever thermal management, enables some upper bitrate and high frame rate recording at 4K resolution.

It shoots 14-bit RAW, plus 4:2:2 10-bit video at 4K/60, and that ways you can get sharp, smooth footage - expressly when using the 5-axis stabilisation. Crucially for anyone who does a lot of colour correction, the 10-bit data moreover ways you get a lot of room to tweak colours, balance, exposure, highlights and the like without losing detail or making the picture noisy.

On the subject of colour correction, you moreover get several picture profiles to segregate from. These include S-Log2 and S-Log3, as well as a few variegated HLG modes for HDR capture. Those join a handful of Cine modes, and the usual standard will-less movie setting. If you want, you can plane retread and fine-tune your own custom preset, with the seated screen offering a decent preview of what it will squint like on a well-balanced monitor afterwards.

The end result with video is a colour-rich picture with sharp details and well-controlled exposure/shadows in will-less mode. It didn't seem to struggle with anything, with the same autofocus and real-time tracking keeping subjects sharp.

With the F/1.8 lens, we were using it moreover meant some pretty dramatic depth of field, with some stunning, natural-looking bokeh/background blur. Of course, at its peak, that moreover meant a very narrow zone of focus, but, with the right subject and in the right setting, it's effective. For instance, when shooting products in a cramped space, it can help add some depth that otherwise wouldn't be there with everything so tropical together.

We didn't notice any significant issues with any of the footage or stills. Plane in the shadows, or with slightly lower-than-optimal light levels, it can requite good detail without excessive noise. And, despite having quite a wide-angle lens, the levels of distortion were low too.